The “Internet of Things” is based on the idea that everyday items are identified, localized, addressed and controllable on the internet. This idea is driven by various trends, including rising energy costs and the movement towards regenerative energy types and independent supply furthering investments in a smart grid as much as in electrical mobility and public charging stations.
The rising costs of medical care relating to the fact that society as a whole is ageing support the needs for remote care of both sick and healthy people. The revolution in building technology is also gaining more attention, resulting in the demand for new services starting from the multimedia networking of data, voice and video and extending to building control and surveillance systems. The primary objective of this is to improve comfort from a private point of view and administration costs from a commercial point of view.

Whether this “Networking of Things” takes wireless form, cable form or a hybrid of both will be influenced by factors such as data volume, power consumption, the type of application, etc. However, there are certain central requirements which must be met by all subscribers such as support for an IP-based infrastructure and standardized connection technologies to ensure wide inter-operability. The possibility of scalable connections (which relate to data transfer in Mbps) to allow scope for various application scenarios and future growth is another such requirement. In addition the use of minimum system resources and maximum energy efficiency is also a necessity. QUALCOMM ATHEROS supplies an extensive portfolio of wireless and cabled technologies and its very wide base of installations means that it is in an excellent position to establish the “Internet of Things” on a wide front.

AR4100 low energy WLAN

The AR4100 is a small form-factor, single stream 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi system-in-package (SIP) solution which has been specially developed to support applications using low-resource microcontrollers and sending infrequent data packages over the network. The focus in these 802.11 applications is not on high data rates but on low-energy consumption, ease of use, very fast wake-up times and minimum total costs. The AR4100 is actually a device that integrates all Wi-Fi functionality in a flat 8.2 mm x 9.2 mm LGA package which can easily be mounted in normal manufacturing flows. The device requires only a few external bypass capacitors and an antenna. The AR4100 is based on an extremely low-power consumption embedded architecture which allows standby current consumption as low as µA. It has been optimized for client applications that have lower data rates which includes a slimmed down driver software package allowing easy integration with low-cost microcontrollers.

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

AR4100802.11n, single stream system-in-package (SIP)
* Low energy
o Power saving modes as low as 5µA
o Fast wake-up times as low as 2.2ms
* Low system resource requirements
o Small, simple host driver simplifies low resource micro controller (MCU) hosts
* Simple low-cost wireless system integration
o LGA package allows 2- or 4-layer PCB design
o Near zero external components required
o Integrated RF front end, RF shield and clocks
o Direct connect to a 50 Ohm antenna
* QUALCOMM ATHEROS Industry Leading 802.11n Wi-Fi®
o Integrated high-power, high-efficiency power amplifier
o Wi-Fi protected setup
* Standard SPI Interface for connecting to microcontrollers

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